Is VMware’s brain drain a sign of its influence, or of its demise?

The big news out of VMware is that it’s likely spinning out a cloud computing business, but the company also has had a fair share of significant personnel departures over the past year. A talent exodus as VMware ware tries to compete with Microsoft, Google and Amazon to be the big name in cloud computing may indicate that all is not well in Palo Alto.

But this news isn’t all bad. The number of principal engineers and other technical leaders leaving the company and trying to have big impacts elsewhere suggests VMware might achieve mafia status a la Sun Microsystems, FacebookGoogle or PayPal. Its employees appear to have the vision, skills and reputations that transcend their work at VMware.

Some of the higher-profile departures came over the past few months in the form of SpringSource Founder Rod Johnson; former CFO and Co-president of Business Operations Mark Peek (to Workday), former Chief Development Officer, Co-president of Products and Strategic Advisor to the CEO Richard McAniff; former VP of Engineering Peter Cooper-Ellis (to Cloudera) and former cloud computing CTO Derek Collison (he founded Apcera). But that’s just the start.

Digging under the covers, you find a lot of other technological leaders with years of experience at VMware heading for the door with the past year. Among them:

Former Senior Member of the Technical Staff Suresh Madhu ( he founded Onecloud Labs)

Although it’s somewhat ancient history by now, VMware also lost some veteran technologists (including its first-ever hire) in 2009 and 2010. One went Google, one went to Facebook and the other is working on his own startup. Only one of the company’s original five co-founders remains.

Do these departures spell trouble?

None of this is necessarily indicative of bad things afoot at VMware, of course. That anyone who came on board as part of the SpringSource acquisition left after their stock-option lockout period expired probably should have been expected considering how commonplace that type of transition is. And 10 years (give or take a few) is a long time to stay with one employer, especially in the fast-moving technology business. Sometimes, people just want to do new things.

But seeing the brains behind important business lines such as SpringSource and VMware’s cloud unit departing doesn’t bode well for their continued innovation. In Silicon Valley, the chance to innovate is what attracts talent, and the would-be VMware mafia’s various startup projects are sure to lure some quality engineers (as will Google, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, Twitter and any number of hot web startups).

I’ve also heard that EMC’s continued pressure on VMware to act in accordance with EMC’s wishes has driven away some talent. It’s too early to tell whether that’s for better or for worse — EMC has proven itself a smart company over the years — but working for one now-large enterprise (VMware) seemingly under the thumb of an ever bigger one (EMC) might not be a lure to top talent. While VMware certainly should strive to become as mighty as companies such as HP, Microsoft and Cisco were in their heydays (and still are), it’s still young enough that it probably isn’t quite ready to go through the trials and tribulations those companies have as they struggled to remain relevant over the past few years.

The big difference, however, is that VMware has all the technological pieces it needs to stay relevant — even to lead the way — for a long time to come. But it still has to capitalize on them and create a cohesive vision for how they interact with one another and then continue to ensure they remain on the cutting edge. That’s gonna take the right people.